The United States announced a new contribution of US$123 million to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), which will enable the Agency to continue its work serving a population of some five million registered Palestine refugees in the region. This latest donation brings the total U.S. contribution to UNRWA in 2013 to US$ 244.5 million.

US$ 75 million will go towards the General Fund, which supports core activities in education, health care, relief and social services, camp infrastructure and improvement and microfinance.

"On behalf of UNRWA, I would like to thank the United States for this generous contribution today. The U.S. has assisted the Agency for several decades as a major bilateral donor. Its commitment to Palestine refugees is crucial to maintaining regional stability and supporting health, education and other programmes that UNRWA offers to this disadvantaged community. Despite the difficult economic situation worldwide, the U.S. has proven once again that it is dedicated to the development of Palestine refugee potential," said UNRWA Commissioner-General Filippo Grandi.

The donation from the U.S. Department of State's Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration includes an additional US$ 37 million earmarked for the Agency's Emergency Appeal in Gaza and the West Bank, US$ 10 million for the construction and equipment of three schools and two health centres in Gaza and US$ 1 million for relief work in Nahr el-Bared camp in Lebanon.

U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kelly Clements reaffirmed the United States support for UNRWA services, saying: "The United States has been proud to work with UNRWA for many years. We remain committed to supporting their efforts to help Palestinian refugees receive the services that they need."

Yes, the US has donated money to the only refugee agency on Earth that guarantees that next year there will be more "refugees" than there were this year.

And until the US pressures UNRWA to adopt a cessation clause in line with the UNHCR's, where citizens of a country (Jordan) are not eligible for UNRWA services and where descendants do not automatically receive refugee status, and where people who live in the boundaries of British Mandate Palestine would no longer be considered "refugees," American taxpayers will continue to pay for this useless, bloated organization whose sole purpose nowadays is to expand the "refugee" problem, not to eliminate it.

(By way of contrast , in 2012, the total cash donated to UNRWA by all Arab states was less than $16M, of which Saudi Arabia gave $12M.)

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NGO Monitor Report: Secret EU Funding for BDS Leader

Jerusalem

In a new report presented to members of the European Parliament, NGO Monitor details the damaging impact of highly secretive EU funding for radical political advocacy NGOs. According to NGO Monitor, EU funds are going to organizations involved in anti-Israel boycotts and violent demonstrations, which undermine the EU's efforts to secure peace in the Middle East.

The report, Lack of Due Diligence and Transparency in European Union Funding for Radical NGOs, shows how EU-funded NGOs lead the campaigns to demonize Israel through the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) - actions that totally contradict the EU's proclaimed objectives of supporting peace and democratic development.

"The EU's grantees are centrally involved in the 2001 Durban NGO Forum's strategy of political warfare and demonization of Israel. The Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP) and its allies are driving Europe's double standards that single-out Israel through product labeling," stated Prof. Gerald Steinberg, president of NGO Monitor. "The EU refusal to release any significant documents that shed light on funding decisions reflects a clear violation of transparency principles, and allows for highly irresponsible EC actions."

Examples of misdirected and unsupervised funding are examined in the NGO Monitor report:

Coalition of Women for Peace (CWP) received funding from the European Instrument for Democracy and Human Rights (EIDHR) ("Empowering Women, Building Peace" €247,668) and from the PfP -- Partnership for Peace ("Addressing Fear: Strengthening the Nonviolent Alternative" €355,130). CWP is a leader in BDS and demonization campaigns, and in sponsoring "Nakba Day" activities that amplify the Palestinian narrative. CWP's partners in the PfP grant include the Palestinian Popular Struggle Coordination Committee (PSCC), which organized protests that have often turned violent, and Nova, a radical Spanish political NGO.

As the report details, CWP's agenda is also reflected in the participation of its activists in demonstrations carrying flags of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), categorized by the EU as a terrorist organization. See pictures here.

"The study emphasizes the fundamental damage caused by extreme secrecy and the lack of due diligence in the European Commission's decision-making for funding radical NGOs," continued Steinberg. "The facts clearly demonstrate that either the officials involved were unaware of the groups chosen to receive taxpayer funds, or that they chose to promote NGOs that fuel the conflict and promote confrontation, under the façade of 'non-violence.'"

The EU report follows an NGO Monitor report presented in Washington in May on U.S. Government funding for several Middle East political NGOs. On the basis of this publication, members of Congress and U.S. Government officials took action to insure transparency prevent the misallocation of such grants for counterproductive NGOs. This is an important precedent that the EU can follow.

NGO Monitor (www.ngo-monitor.org), based in Jerusalem, provides information and analysis, promotes accountability, and supports discussion on the activities of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) involved in Middle East politics and human rights affairs.

Looking at the state of Jerusalem's eastern sector today, it is understandable why Israel would not want UNESCO or anyone else walking around the Old City, especially the Palestinian-populated parts of it. Because anyone who does, will see the devastation that Israel and its settlers have wreaked on one of the oldest and most beautiful cities in the world.

Devastation? United Jerusalem today is more beautiful than at any time since 70 CE. So what is the devastation?

Excavation works are being conducted in and around the Aqsa Mosque to make way for more Jewish construction at the place where Waqf authorities say Ottoman and Abbasid artifacts have long been tucked away.

Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the subject knows that the Israel Antiquities Authority bends over backwards to save ancient artifacts - belonging to any religion. The Waqf, on the other hand, lies whenever it is convenient to do so, and has purposefully destroyed thousands of priceless ancient Jewish objects.

Condemning Jews acting responsibly to save antiquities while condoning Muslims destroying them is a bit of a double standard. There might be a term for that.

A Muslim graveyard is being dug up just outside the Old City's Jaffa Gate, to build – ironically – a museum of tolerance.

Today, two stores were forcefully taken over by Jewish settlers in Al Hakari, one of the neighborhoods in the Muslim quarter and every day, it seems that more and more homes are either being demolished by Israeli municipality authorities or being taken over by Jewish settlers.

Miftah seems to believe that Jews should be forbidden to buy buildings in Jerusalem. Yet Arabs move to Jewish neighborhoods, and that is not a problem.

There might be a term for that.

The "Judiazation" of Jerusalem is a term many Palestinians and Arabs use for what Israel is doing in the city. In a nutshell, it is the long-term plan Israel is gradually carrying out to change the Arab Palestinian character of Jerusalem. This means demolishing old and historical structures, displacing Palestinians, handing over their homes to settlers and trying to erase the Palestinian or Arab history of the city.

I am not familiar with any demolition of historic Islamic structures since 1967.

Miftah's lies go beyond that, by pretending that Jerusalem has a primarily "Arab Palestinian character." They might want to explain exactly why there were no synagogues in the Old City between 1948 and 1967. I'm sure they can figure it out, even if they approve of the actions that burnt them down.

Sheikh Jarrah, one of the more affluent Palestinian neighborhoods of Jerusalem, is now pierced with Jewish flags waving from homes that have been wrestled from their Palestinian owners, and Israel's light rail train cuts right down through Palestinian neighborhoods outside of the city center.

And somehow Jerusalem's light rail, which serves Arabs and Jews equally, has only taken land from Arabs in its construction. Amazing!

On Shavuot, Israeli settlers and extremists poured into the Old City, singing loudly, banging on the shop doors and waving huge Israeli flags. The sight was disconcerting to say the least. However, the afternoon of that same day, at Damascus Gate, passersby were met with a completely different scene. Palestinian flags waved in determined Palestinian hands under the threatening eye of heavily armed Israeli police and soldiers. The youths were fearless, demanding freedom, with strong, unrelenting voices.

Jews walking around with Israeli flags are "settlers" and "extremists." Arabs waving Palestinian flags - not being interfered with by the Israeli police - are "fearless" and "determined." Why is one group described as heroic and the other in a derogatory manner, when they were doing the same thing?

An Israeli IDF spokesperson recently blasted Breaking the Silence, an Israeli NGO that claims to expose alleged wrong-doings of the IDF, in a Facebook post this past Friday, June 21.

IDF Captain Barak Raz, the spokesman for the Judea and Samaria Division, wrote that Breaking the Silence, which receives significant funding from several European government agencies and foundations such as the Norwegian embassy and Christian Aid, “engages in nothing, but NOTHING, other than a smear campaign targeting the IDF.”

In an exclusive interview with Tazpit News Agency, Raz explained that he had had “enough with the nonsense that this organization [Breaking the Silence] represents.”

“Breaking the Silence is an immature and unprofessional organization,” he told Tazpit News Agency. “At the IDF we deal with many organizations that hold counter views, but they communicate with us – there is an open e-mail and phone exchange, and verification of issues that come up. Breaking the Silence does not engage in any of that and prevents the IDF from properly addressing any of their claims.”

Founded in 2004, Breaking the Silence collects and publishes testimonies by former Israeli soldiers who served in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem while also conducting monthly tours of Hebron and the South Hebron Hills. Many of the participants who join the tours are university students visiting from abroad including a number of Europeans.

On their website, Breaking the Silence states that the soldiers’ testimonies are intended to show a “much more grimmer picture in which deterioration of moral standards finds expression in the character of orders and rules of engagement, and are justified in the name of Israel’s security.” These testimonies and reports are directed to and often carried by international media.

One video testimony shows a former female IDF soldier describing herself acting as a monster while serving in Hebron, adding that she was not the only soldier to act in such a manner.

According to Raz, there are several problems with these testimonies. On his Facebook post, he states that the IDF has standing orders, regulations, and an ethical code that soldiers must abide by. “These not only require soldiers to act according to the law, but also to report instances when things were otherwise,” he writes. “Instead of taking responsibility for their mistakes, these soldiers simply blame the army for what they did wrong,” he elaborated to Tazpit News Agency.

Furthermore, he continues: “The information used by Breaking the Silence by and large seems to derive from two sources – unverifiable hearsay or accounts from anonymous former soldiers who, sometimes, they themselves deserve to be behind bars in military prison for what they did!”

Breaking the Silence could not be reached for comment at the time of this article’s publication.

Raz said that his response to Breaking the Silence came from a more personal vantage point, although nothing that he said in his Facebook post hadn’t been formally stated by the IDF Spokesperson’s Office.

“The social media platform gave me the opportunity to express my view more personally, from my gut – and to stimulate a different kind of discussion between people across the political spectrum. I have many different followers on my Facebook and Twitter accounts, from the right and left and it’s important that they meet and communicate,” Raz explained. “Social media is a means of accomplishing that kind of discourse.”

“For me open dialogue is important, and that is exactly what Breaking the Silence does not engage in. The organization is counter-productive; it offers no solutions and misconstrues reality to fit its own political agenda – smearing the IDF.”

The fight against terrorism in Judea and Samaria is complicated by the young age of the attackers, IDF Colonel Yaniv Alaluf said Saturday evening.

Alaluf, commander for the Etzion region, spoke at a meeting with Israeli residents of the area. Israelis in Judea and Samaria have expressed strong concern over the recent increase in rock and firebomb attacks on drivers.

The attacks have caused serious injury in several instances, and have caused multiple deaths as well.

The average attacker is just 12-14 years old, Alaluf said. Many beg soldiers not to arrest them because they have tests in school the next day, he related.Israeli officials have warned that PA textbooks and television programs are inciting children to terrorism.

Alaluf had some good news for residents. Israel is building a road that is further from Arab villages than the existing highways, which will hopefully make attacks less frequent, he said.

He also noted that a terrorism suspect who soldiers have been seeking for years was recently apprehended.

In addition, he said, "We aren't seeing organized terrorist groups organizing attacks like they did in the past. Of course, in our region we're trying to get back to the quiet we had in 2012."

JERUSALEM - The Palestinian administration in the West Bank has tried to help the latestUS peacemaking driveby quietly cutting off funds for grassroots campaigners against Israel's occupation of the territory, a senior Israeli general said on Tuesday.

The allegation, which the campaigners contested, underscored the sensitivity of the Palestinians' security coordination with Israel at a time of deadlocked diplomacy over their independence drive and censure from rival Hamas Islamists.

Major-General Nitzan Alon, Israel's top West Bank military officer, also said that violence could escalate if US Secretary of State John Kerry's peace mission failed, and voiced frustration with the "terror activity" of radical Jewish settlers against whom Israel this week authorized new measures.

Briefing diplomats and reporters at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, a conservative think-tank, Alon said Kerry's bids to revive negotiations had a "positive influence on the ground, mainly on the PA (Palestinian Authority).

"The PA, for example, almost stopped financing a group that dealt with some riots and protests against Israel, and they halted the funds of this group in the last couple of months."

Speaking later to Reuters, he named the group as the Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements, whose activism focuses on Palestinian land lost to Israel's West Bank barrier and Jewish settlements.

Alon said the PA had kept its bankrolling of the group, and the cut-off of cash, secret. "They weren't looking for diplomatic recognition for the move but rather for the territory to quiet down," he said.

Palestinian officials could not immediately be reached for comment. Mohammed al-Khatib, a veteran Popular Committee Against the Wall and Settlements member, dismissed Alon's disclosure.

"The Palestinian Authority has paid compensation to those whose houses or agriculture were destroyed by the occupation and they have helped with lawyer's fees for local activists," Khatib told Reuters. "Nobody gives us money. The activists here do what they do out of a sense of national duty, not to get money."

Alon said there were signs of Palestinian restraint in the West Bank wearing thin. He cited rising anti-Israeli violence such as stone- and Molotov cocktail-throwing and what he said was the involvement of some PA security men in attacks.

"If, in a few weeks, the attempt of the American involvement will go (away) with nothing, I'm afraid that we will see this trend of escalation even strengthening," he said.

Alon has also been outspoken against ultranationalist Jews who have torched and desecrated Palestinian property in so-called "Price Tag" attacks meant to avenge Palestinian violence or discourage bids by the government to curb settlements.

Israeli tourists in Bulgaria were shocked by the prevalence of Nazi kitsch on sale during a recent visit to the beach resort of Nesebar, Israel's Channel 2 reported Monday.

Perhaps even more startling was the response of one of the shop owners selling items such as Hitler mugs, wristwatches with swastikas, and an alarm clock with a picture of Hitler on its face: "There are people who want to buy the products, otherwise we would not sell them. We sell to those who want them, those who don't, don't have to buy them."

According to Channel 2, there was a confrontation between some of the tourists who tried to call the authorities and the shop owners, who felt that their livelihood was under threat.

One tourist told Channel 2 that a shop owner even refused to sell him the alarm clock after learning that he was Israeli. Another Israeli tourist voiced his regret, saying that the trip to Bulgaria was pleasant, Nesebar beautiful, but that he couldn't in good conscience return knowing he'd be supporting a town that sells such items.

Netanyahu is sincere about a two-state solution  and strong enough to reach a peace agreement despite internal opposition, according to Kjell Magne Bondevik

Norway is unlikely to boycott or sanction Israel or even implement a labeling regime for settlement products, the country's former prime minister said Wednesday. This although Oslo is reputed to be among the most anti-Israel governments in Europe.

"Some ministers have spoken out in favor [of sanctions] but the government's policy is not sanctions and boycott. So I don't think that will be Norwegian policy," Kjell Magne Bondevik told The Times of Israel.

Bondevik, Norway's prime minister from 1997 to 2000 and from 2001 to 2005, is scheduled to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  who he believes is sincere about peace with the Palestinians  on Thursday. The two leaders know each from Netanyahu's first term as prime minister from 1996 to 1999.

In 2012, the European Union agreed in principle to label Israeli goods originating beyond the Green Line. In April, foreign ministers of 13 EU countries  Spain, Portugal, France, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Slovenia, Luxembourg and Malta  signed a letter reaffirming their support for labeling products originating in Israeli settlements. This month, Germany  considered one of Israel's strongest allies on the continent  also expressed supportfor the introduction of a labeling scheme.

In addition to the labeling issue, the EU and a few European countries have subtly threatened Israel with further sanctions if it continues to build beyond the Green Line, especially in the controversial E1 area connecting Jerusalem to Ma'aleh Adumim. About six months ago, the EU foreign ministers said they will "closely monitor the situation [of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict] and its broader implications, andact accordingly."

Bondevik said he believes that Oslo  which is not a member of the EU  will not join the European chorus and threaten punitive measures to force Israel to move in the peace process.

"I don't think that any sort of sanctions and boycotts will help. I prefer the use of political means and that window of opportunity that is open now with the engagement from the US and the Arab League," he said, referring to efforts by US Secretary of State John Kerry to revive the peace process and the2002 Arab Peace Initiative.

A "combination" of Kerry's shuttle diplomacy plus the fact that the Arab League recently reissued its 11-year-old peace proposal and for the first time mentioned the possibility of mutually agreed land swaps "could be helpful, because a peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians also requires support from the Arab countries," he said on the sideline of the President's Conference in Jerusalem.

Bondevik, who is also the founder and president of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights, acknowledged that Netanyahu used to staunchly oppose a two-state solution. However, he said, Netanyahu is sincere today when he professes to agree, in principle, to the creation of Palestinian state, the former prime minister said.

"I do think he means it," Bondevik added. "Because he is not the first prime minister who has changed. Ariel Sharon changed. And I knew him very well, he was the very first sitting Israeli prime minister ever recognizing the right for the Palestinians to have their independent state."

Netanyahu "has changed and I take it seriously, as other former prime ministers changed," Bondevik, 65, continued. "Maybe when they become prime minister they really see the reality [with different] eyes and that it is in the long-term security interest of Israel to have peace with their closest neighbors."

Bondevik said he agreed with Netanyahu's statement Tuesday night that peace requires a strong Israel.

"Israel is strong for the time being, Bibi is a strong prime minister," he said, using Netanyahu's nickname.

Bondevik, a member of the centrist Christian Democratic Party, said he is aware thatsome seniormembers ofIsrael's current governmentare staunchly opposed to a two-state solution. Yet if the chance for a peace agreement came up, Netanyahu would be able to push it through, he assessed. "It's up to the prime minister. If Bibi makes a decision to go for a negotiated agreement  I think he's that strong that Likud will follow him, and then they have the majority."

Pro-Israel groups often accuse Norway of one being unfairly biased toward the Palestinians. "The degree of anti-Israelism in Norway today on the state level, in the media, in the trade unions and at the universities, colleges and schools is unprecedented in modern Norwegian history," a prominent Norwegian historian and self-described "social pundit," Hanne Nabintu Herland,said last year at a lecture in Jerusalem. "The powerful individuals that have pushed for these negative and biased attitudes in Norway are today responsible for creating a politically-correct hatred towards Israel."

At the time, Norway's deputy head of mission in Tel Aviv, Vebjørn Dysvik, rejected these claims yet admitted ordinary Norwegians have a mainly negative view of Israel. Initially, Oslo was a staunch supporter of the Jewish state, he said. But in the 1970s and 1980s, things changed: Israel captured and occupied the West Bank and, in 1978, invaded south Lebanon. "The occupation of the Palestinians is the defining factor in the relationship between Norway and Israel," Dysvik said.

On Wednesday, Bondevik said Oslo has no preference in the Middle East conflict. "The official Norwegian view still is balanced  we see both sides," he said. "I have always looked upon myself as a friend of Israel, but on the other hand you can also be friends with the Palestinians."

The highest-ranking Soviet-bloc intelligence officer ever to defect to the West claims in a new book that anti-American Islamic terrorism had its roots in a secret 1970s-era KGB plot to harm but the United States and Israel by seeding Muslim countries with carefully targeted propaganda.

Yuri Andropov, the KGB chief for 15 years before he became the Soviet premier, sent hundreds of agents and thousands of copies of propaganda literature to Muslim countries. 'By 1972,' according to the book, 'Andropov's disinformation machinery was working around the clock to persuade the Islamic world that Israel and the United States intended to transform the rest of the world into a Zionist fiefdom.'

'According to Andropov, the Islamic world was a petri dish in which the KGB community could nurture a virulent strain of America-hatred, grown from the bacterium of Marxist-Leninist thought.'Those claims come from former Romanian Lt. Gen Ion Mihail Pacepa and University of Mississippi law professor Ronald Rychlak.

In their book, titled Disinformation, Pacepa spills the secrets he kept for decades as head of Romania's spy apparatus and secret police, the DIE, before he secured political asylum in the U.S. in 1978.

Andropov began his leadership of the KGB just months before the 1967 Six-Day War between Arabs and Israelis, in which Israel humiliated the key Soviet allies Syria and Egypt. And he decided to settle the score by training Palestinian militants to hijack El Al airplanes and bomb sites in Jerusalem.

But more shocking, Andropov commissioned the first Arabic translation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a Russian-forged 1905 propaganda book that alleged Jews were plotting to take over Europe - and were being aided by the United States.

Mohammad Assaf declared himself a "son of the camp" on Tuesday as he returned to the Gaza Strip, where thousands of jubilant fans awaited the arrival of the Arab Idol star.

Flag-waving crowds waited for several hours at the Rafah crossing on Egypt's border for 23-year-old Assaf, three days after he was crowned the winner of the popular regional singing contest.

Assaf bent over and kissed the ground as he crossed the border, an AFP correspondent reported, before holding a news conference alongside Hamas officials.

"I thank you for your wonderful welcome and hope the celebrations won't feature gunfire," Assaf said, alluding to the shots in the air that sometimes accompany celebrations in the Middle East.

Assaf said he was the son of Palestine and "son of the (refugee) camp," and told reporters he would continue to sing nationalistic songs and raise the Palestinian flag.

So the newest Palestinian Arab hero is a "son of the camp."

Will any reporter ask why these camps still exist in territory that is ruled by Palestinian Arabs?

Why can't Hamas or the PA dismantle the camps and mainstream the residents into more normal society? There is nothing stopping that from happening. They are not "refugees" by any definition because even the ones who are over 65 years old are living in the land they came from. (At worst, they are "internally displaced persons.")

So why do these camps, often hotbeds of terror, exist?

Netty Gross, in The Jerusalem Report in July 1998, asked an official why the camps there hadn't been dismantled. She was told the Palestinian Authority had made a "political decision" not to do anything for the more than 650,000 Palestinians living in the camps until the final-status talks with Israel took place. (quoted here.)

Keeping the people crammed into these "camps" is a violation of their human rights, but no human rights organizations are calling for Hamas or the PA to dismantle them and end the discrimination that exists even within Palestinian Arab ruled territory.

Where are the human rights activists demanding that the camps be demolished and the people given normal housing and services in line with everyone else, to live in their land as normal citizens? Why did Assaf have to grow up in such miserable conditions?

The sad fact is that the camps exist for one reason only - to purposefully keep hundreds of thousands of people in misery to make Israel look bad, even though Israel does nothing to keep a single person in a "refugee" camp.

Don't believe me? Then look at this quote from Palestine's ambassador to Lebanon, Abdullah Abdullah, in 2011, quoted in Lebanon's Daily Star:

The ambassador unequivocally says that Palestinian refugees would not become citizens of the sought for U.N.-recognized Palestinian state, an issue that has been much discussed. "They are Palestinians, that's their identity," he says. "But … they are not automatically citizens."

This would not only apply to refugees in countries such as Lebanon, Egypt, Syria and Jordan or the other 132 countries where Abdullah says Palestinians reside. Abdullah said that "even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [Palestinian] state, they are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens."

Mohammad Assaf is part of the long tradition of anti-Israel propaganda where ordinary Palestinian Arabs are used as pawns and discriminated against even in places ruled by their leaders until Israel is destroyed. And that is the long-term plan - a plan that is apparently endorsed by the UN as well as by so-called "human rights" organizations who never say a word against the existence of these outdoor prisons for thousands of people.